Ed Spanjaard

Ed Spanjaard is one of the finest conductors in the Netherlands and a champion of Dutch music. He works as a guest conductor all over the world, and his repertoire ranges from opera (more than fifty to date) and orchestral work to contemporary music. His 2012 farewell concert (after 12 years) as the chief conductor of the Limburg Symphony Orchestra was a performance of Debussy’s Martyre de Saint Sébastien – a piece that is rarely performed – with a new libretto by Dutch poet laureate Ramsey Nasr and choreography by Toer van Schayk. He is the musical director of the Nieuw Ensemble, which premiered Si Fan, a new Chinese opera based on the Sichuan tradition, at the 2015 Holland Festival. Dutch filmmaker Frank Scheffer made a full-length documentary about this project. Spanjaard conducted a highly successful production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen with the Dutch Touring Opera. He began 2016 with a performance of the same composer’s Fliegende Holländer at the Aalto Theatre in Essen.